


Red Water

by Needle_Bones



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 01:52:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3750496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Needle_Bones/pseuds/Needle_Bones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written because walking around that place with open wounds is hella dumb.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Water

Miles Upshur was very tired. This was likely due, at least in part, to the thin lines of warm blood that occupied their time by running in complicated patterns over his skin.

The first clear thought that managed to claw its way through the fog that had settled over his senses was that he was cold. Mount Massive Asylum was a sprawling building and the busted out windows didn’t do much in the way of sealing the heat in. Colorado winters had a way of weeding out those who weren’t prepared for them and being trapped in a building full of psychopaths was only marginally better than being caught outside in a blizzard.

He swallowed hard, still tasting metal and vomit, and moved to straighten his legs out. The vent didn’t allow him much room so crawling to the edge was more of an ordeal than he’d been bracing for. That bastard Trager had sliced the back of his leg open with those oversized scissors and the wound caught and pulled whenever he tried to move. He was lucky he could still use his leg.

Jumping down to the cracked tile floor ripped the gash back open, started the blood flowing again. He should have been expecting it but the sharp stab of pain still put him on the ground and pulled the air from his lungs. Miles pressed his trembling hand – now, thanks to Trager, missing his ring finger – over the wound. The left leg of his jeans from about his knee down was wet and heavy, soaked through. This could be bad. If he couldn’t run, he was as good as dead.

_Shit. All right… All right, just get up. You’ll be fine._

It was quiet around that side of the hospital and that was something to cling to. A lack of inmates meant a marginally better chance of him seeing the sun again. Miles clawed his way back to his feet and put his right shoulder against the wall. He didn’t trust his legs to hold him up right then. They burned and shook under him, every nerve turned to razor wire.

Really, walking around with open wounds was a very dumb idea. He needed to find something to tape himself up and at least get the bleeding stopped. He also needed a shower but like hell he was going to strip down in a place like this. He hadn’t been lying before about death being low on the list of horrible things that could happen to him here.

About halfway down the hall was a room with the door either swung wide open or taken off the hinges. Miles’ leg was barbed wire and glass by the time he reached it and the sense of being little more than a wounded gazelle in the lion’s den started to gnaw at him. Under any other circumstances, he might have been embarrassed about falling against the table and simply hanging there until he could drop himself into one of the metal chairs but the fact of the matter was that he’d long since stopped worrying about how he might look. Vanity died a painful death in dangerous situations.

For a long while after that, Miles sat in the half-light and did his best not to cry. One pale, bleeding hand pressed to his forehead and a dull ache scratched behind his eyes when the adrenaline finally started to cut off. Foggy, violent thoughts paced the edges of his mind. The entire asylum bled violence and he was finding it more and more difficult to keep his thoughts from running just as red.

The room he’d holed up in was outfitted with several security monitors on the right-hand wall. From the looks of it, it had become a shelter for a few workers not long after… whatever the hell got loose in this place. The heavy door had been broken off of its hinges but the room itself was still pretty much intact.

Miles lifted his head and looked around, cringing when his muscles locked and twinged. Eventually he bothered to reach for the closed locker that sat just to his right. The door was dented in several places but it opened when he pulled.

There wasn’t much left inside – just some food that he wouldn't trust enough to eat and a first aid kit with the latch popped open. There were only a few rolls of gauze, a half-empty bottle of hand-sanitizer, and a few other basics in it but it was better than nothing.

He’d actively tried to avoid looking at his hands again up until then but finally he was in a situation that demanded it. His right index finger was missing near where the first joint from his hand started to bend. The skin was ragged and raw around the wound. His missing ring finger was, in a way, more of a concern. The cut was further back, almost clean against his hand. The bleeding had almost stopped by then and blood didn't over his wrists or into his sleeves in thick rivers whenever he moved. It was almost pretty, being so bright – rich against the white and dull grey of the asylum with its rotted boards and cracked tiles.

He blinked and refocused on his mangled hands while one thought quietly swam to the surface:  _This is gonna hurt like hell._

Like so often since this whole nightmare started, he’d been hoping he was wrong. That bottle was way out of date but damn if it didn’t burn. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Miles expected at least a faint numbing effect from shock or cold or  _something_  but in reality it was rather like holding his hand over an open flame.

His breath caught hard in his throat and he made a soft, strangled noise before biting his arm through the sleeve of his jacket hard enough that his jaw started to ache. The alcohol seared at the torn skin, dragging fire up his arm almost to his shoulder. When it calmed down enough that he could get a full breath again, he wound the gauze around his hand without thinking much at all. The dressing was shaky but he could still use his hand and it would keep the dirt out.

It almost wasn’t worth it. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, his breath coming fast and a little shallow. His throat and lungs burned. He blinked and swallowed and waited for the pain to subside before he moved to his left hand. No, trying to fix things was almost worse.

The gash in his leg was deeper than he’d thought it was but at least the cut was a relatively clean one. The fabric must have held the blades a little straighter. Really, he should have tried to find something to stitch it closed. It was going to scar if it got the chance to heal. Still, what were the odds of him finding a needle clean enough that he’d be willing to risk using it?

Miles left the leg of his jeans rolled up to his knee for a while and waited there, running the remaining fingers of his left hand over the gauze wrapped tight around his calf, and feeling some degree of safe in that little room, even with its missing door. He lingered there for probably longer than he should have but he had to re-wrap his leg twice before the blood stopped soaking through the bandages.

It must have been around midnight when he finally gave up on trying to convince himself to move and crawled into one of the lockers. Everything hurt. The ragged skin and shattered bone under the dressings twinged and ached and underneath all of it was this gnawing hunger that occasionally jabbed a knife under his ribs and twisted the blade.

So Miles sat there and hugged his camera to him and tried to ignore the the low ache that swept up him like a sandstorm, his nerves going frayed and raw. He needed a way out above everything else. At this rate, if the inmates or the cold didn’t get him, he felt pretty sure that the hunger would. That, or a bad infection.

_Please… just let me go home_ , he thought as he stared up at the faint light filtering in through the slats in the top of the locker door, not sure if he was praying or begging. He curled his legs against his chest, folding his arms on his knees. His hands shook and he caught the fabric of his coat in his hands in much the same way he used to cling to his mother’s clothes when he was younger. It did little for the pain but managed to dull the edge of the anxiety.

The chill crept in on spider’s legs and soon enough he was shivering, starving, just waiting with little to do aside from listen to the dull static that had begun pulsing in his bones.

He dreamt in red.


End file.
